Intentional Polarization

• In Event: The Political Dynamics of Progress and Backlash on Women’s and LGBT+ Rights

Abstract

This paper seeks to make sense of three seemingly-disparate features of populist-authoritarian governance: 1) extremist public policies in some areas, and not others (De la Torre 2007, Vegetti 2014, Mudde 2020, Carrión 2021); 2) selective reliance on polarization and transgressive speech (Haggard and Kaufman 2021, Somer et al. 2021, Sponholz 2022); and 3) cultural warfare, including homo and transphobia (Corrales and Kiryk 2022; Boas 2022). Why do we often see this trio of approaches under populist-authoritarian governments interested in democratic backsliding? We first discuss why populist-authoritarian presidents adopt, from the outset, extremist policies and discourse. This extremism is attractive because it offers payoffs: polarizing the electorate and uniting the base. However, this extremism is often insufficient to sustain electoral majorities. It is at this point that populists feel tempted to make overtures to radicalized ideology, including conservative religion. We use data from V-Dem to show that as backsliding intensifies, so does the use of ideology by presidents. We also argue that this trio can still be risky for populist presidents: extremism can galvanize the opposition. We discuss the conditions under which this backfiring materializes.

Authors

• Javier Corrales, Amherst College

• Ricardo José Salas Dïaz, University of Massachusetts, Amherst